Compacting of folders is necessary or they will become corrupted or else so
large that they can no longer be used. Deleting a message does not reclaim
the space. The message is marked as deleted but is still there until the
folder is compacted. That is why programs such as DBXtract work.

If a user closes compacting while compacting is in progress data loss will
probably occur.

Open OE and close it and let it compact the messages. After doing this it
won't ask again until you have closed OE 100 times.

If you have WinXP SP2 you will want this update:
There are two articles, KB918766 and KB918651, but the latter is not
currently available. The download link is
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/d...DisplayLang=en

It places the backup in Recycled, overwriting any earlier backup of the
sane folder(s). To use it, copy it to the store folder, delete the one you
want to replace and then rename the BAK file to DBX. (It's a bit more
complicated if the messed up DBX file isn't there or contains messages that
are hew that you want to keep.

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP OE/WM
http://www.fjsmjs.com


"Theo" wrote in message
...
I use OE6 and noticed that the dbx files located under identities were
getting bigger.
I deleted the "Deleted Items.dbx" file. Went to OE and deleted a number of
mails from my "Send" folder. Next I went to the "Deleted Items" folder and
emptied it.
OE created a new "Deleted Items.dbx" file. However this file has grown to
the size of the deleted mails and the "Send Items.dbx" has remained the
same.
I am fast approaching 1 Gig of dbx files. How can I get OE to purge the
deleted mails? Thanks Theo